


There, Wolf

by roblingt



Series: In Discord And Rhyme [1]
Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK), Torchwood
Genre: 10000-30000 words, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Crossover, Multi, Werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 12,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roblingt/pseuds/roblingt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torchwood has adopted a stray...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Once Bitten

Ianto glanced up from the workstation as Gwen came charging brightly up the stairs. "Jack says you owe him a fiver. Last night's _was_ a werewolf."

"Get out."

"Go have a look for yourself. Wants retconning and to be tagged for release anyway." And a tiny, deadly smile. "Jack also said he'll waive the fiver if you'll be the one to go let him out."

"You are both _so_ dead, you." Chuckling, Gwen headed for the vaults.

And on the other side of the glass, wearing nothing but a blanket and a furious blush --

"It got worse," sighed Andy Davidson.


	2. Twice Shy

_Not the woods this time, or on some lonely hillside surrounded by tufts of bloody wool; he opened his eyes and saw concrete, drab grey under fluorescent flickers that showed him his own faint reflection in an expanse of shatterproof perspex. His faint, human reflection. "Hullo? Is there anyone... Erm, I can explain --"_

_Well, he couldn't, could he. Never woken up on the wrong side of a cell-door to know how even without the... complicating factors. At least it wasn't the central Cardiff lockup, that would have been -- even more mortifying, but bless him if he did know where he was. But somewhere they'd been nice enough to leave him a blanket to lie on. Curious, that._

_Maybe this was the RSPCA._

_He'd seen that film, the one where the American bloke woke up in the wolf pen at the zoo, and thought at the time he'd got off lucky considering; these days any mysterious mammal running about untagged in London would immediately be shot on suspicion of smuggling rabies across through the Tunnel. Having to break out of an animal shelter almost seemed a minor inconvenience in comparison._

_(Although, if this was an animal shelter, strange that they hadn't left him anything beyond the blanket, such as a water-dish...)_

_He was considering how the information that he had about his situation so far fit together, or didn't, when still-heightened hearing picked up on approaching footsteps. He struggled to his feet, wincing with the stiffness and scratches, and wrapped as much of himself in the blanket as he could, trying to order his thoughts into something resembling a plausible explanation that might not give away too much if the morning shift here hadn't seen an enormous gingerish mixed-breed _something_ being brought in the night before. And braced what remained of his dignity to face whatever came._

_He wasn't expecting it to be Gwen Cooper_.

***

"So, this is where you work now," Andy said, somehow managing to make it sound as if _Gwen_ were the one who'd been perpetuating the more grievous coverup. "The mysterious Torchwood and its bloody dungeon."

"This is the Torchwood Three Hub." Andy raised an eyebrow at the pride in her voice. "It's sort of a... monitoring station. There's this rift in space and time runs right through the middle of Cardiff; we deal with what falls though. Things from the past, or the future, or other _planets_..."

"Or werewolves," he finished for her, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"You're the first of those we've seen, actually. Has this, erm... Sorry, I should take the history, let's start at the beginning; do you remember how you... how... _this_...?"

"Traditional way is to get bitten, I believe?" Oh, butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, the sarky bastard. The sarky werewolf bastard. "Don't really know the specifics, if that's what you're getting at. Went on a pub-crawl with some mates and woke up over in Bristol with no trousers and a backful of scratches. Thought I'd just had an interesting night of it, until the next full moon."

_That_ wasn't a story she'd heard anything about, which meant it must have happened since she'd left the force. Not that poor gormless Andy could have kept a secret like _this_ from her while they'd still been partners. Not that poor gormless Andy could have kept it a secret if he'd thought he'd got lucky in the ordinary way, for that matter. "So you'd say it appears to be a classic case of lycanthropy, then? Full moons, silver bullets --"

"_I_ don't know, it's not like it came with the _instructions._ Have to guess at half of it from what I've seen on bloody late-night telly." Andy sneezed. "Erm, I don't suppose you could see your way to letting me out of here, could you? Only it's a bit cold. And damp. And I smell like whoever brought me in must have caught me out rolling in a dead badger."

"The bins behind Sardini's," Gwen corrected him absently, realising her mistake as Andy's expression went dire. "Erm, no, it wasn't me, Jack and Ianto called me about it last night but I wasn't in position to meet them. Looks as if they did a gentle enough job of bringing you in, no... wolfsbane or anything?"

"Dunno. I never remember much the next morning." Andy stepped out of the cell as Gwen opened the door for him. "Had to hitch home from halfway up the Beacons stark naked once. Not sure I'd _want_ to know what happened that time."

"Not sure I'd want to know how you got anyone to pick you up like that," Gwen replied, motioning Andy towards the stairs. He _did_ smell like he'd been rolling in something like an overenthusiastic puppy. "We have showers, help you feel a bit more -- erm, _human_ before you have to meet Jack?"


	3. Third Time Lucky

Andy looked as if he was feeling a small fraction better about his life, clean and dressed in some old scrubs that were way too short but at least something approaching decent. He appeared to be making a heroic effort not to scowl at Gwen's colleagues. "The blanket was a nice touch, very thoughtful. Almost made up for waking up alone in a bloody _cell_."

"Hey, you could have been one of those guys who's cranky in the morning on a good day. Thought you might need some time to cool off before the questions started." Jack was far too amused by this whole situation, Gwen rather thought. Although that it was Andy was probably what had saved him from being left in the vaults to rot with the weevils; not so much compassion for _him_, per se, as the fear of what _she_ would have had to say about it...

Ianto had brought Andy a coffee and the tin of biscuits, which he'd been going through like a man who'd spent the night as a wolf nosing around in the bins behind an Italian restaurant, and then in a cell without a proper breakfast until just this moment. Now he drained the last sip and set the mug onto the table with a look as if he thought trying for a refill might be pushing his luck. "Suppose now you're going to lock me back up to run tests. Or just dissect me."

"Torchwood's not going to _dissect_ you, Andy." Gwen shot a warning glare at Jack. "Well, Owen might have _tried_, but... No one here is going to hurt you. In _any_ way."

"So you're going to let me walk out of here, right. Bollocks. You know I'd have to explain why I'm late for work and I've already made up too many sick aunties for excuses with this."

"I was thinking we could take away your memories from the last few hours, but actually I'm not sure now if that's the best idea," Jack said with a thoughtful frown. "Only leaves us with an amnesiac werewolf running around to have to worry about. An amnesiac werewolf cop."

"Sounds like it'd make a smashing film, though," Ianto murmured. "_Fur On The Force?_ Or _Fuzzy Fuzz_ \--"

Andy pushed up from the settee. "Right, so you obviously _can't_ let me go, we may as well stop pretending you're not about to walk me back to those cells. Can I at least have a water-dish this time?"

"Torchwood is outside the government and beyond the police," Jack said, sounding as if his own reasoning was leading him to a conclusion he wasn't familiar with having to look at. "But I'm not sure how well that would translate into making an actual member of the police force _disappear_. We're short-handed as it is, I don't think we need Gwen spending half her time fielding questions about where you might have got to. In fact..."

He had _that look_ again -- "Oh, Jack, you're _not_."

"Think about it. Twenty-eight days out of the month he's a productive member of society, and for one night he needs a secure place to take a little him time. I'm thinking I can see a win-win here."

"Not to _work_ for us?"

"I nicked _you_ off the force. And you won't even let me give you a fleabath."

"But, as an agent, he's a _werewolf_ \--"

"And Owen was a zombie," Ianto pointed out pragmatically. "We have always prided ourselves on our inclusive hiring policies."

Jack pulled a _so-there-you-go_ sort of a shrug. "Couldn't pass him over on the fine points of his species status when we've already established that even having a pulse is optional. He could sue us."

"I think it's more that Gwen doesn't want to work with _me_," Andy said.

"Oh, Andy, it's not that, it's... Would you really _want_ to do this?"_ Or is that a silly question_... "Well, I suppose working for Torchwood wouldn't be any _more_ dangerous for you than being a werewolf to start with, would it. And, you know, we could study you, too, maybe we can try to find you a cure. -- That is, if a cure would be what you _want_, erm, maybe you..."

"I'd rather not get my hopes up," Andy said bleakly. "But if you could at least help me _manage_ it. I..." His gaze dropped to his toes, bare on the concrete. "All this time I've been thinking, how long before I kill someone? Or worse?"

He didn't need to specify _worse_. Gwen reached out to squeeze Andy's hand reassuringly. "All right, so, you're not alone with this any longer. This is what Torchwood is _for_, really. To help. And sometimes that means helping the monsters, too."

Andy cracked a tiny smile. "Not going to be a good dog and wear a collar, though, not really into that sort of... Erm." Jack was giving him that _Yeah, you went there so far as _I'm_ concerned_ look of his. "Right, forget I said that, don't want Captain Overshare getting the wrong ideas about me I haven't been here five minutes --"

Jack was already arching a speculative eyebrow. "Hey, he said those scratches were on his _back_, right?"

"Can we not, _please_ \--"

And the penny dropped, finally, straight through into Gwen's shoes: "Oh, my _god_. You _had sex_ with the werewolf?"

Andy shrugged, trying his best to look casual even as he slowly turned scarlet. "He _seemed_ like a nice bloke."

There was an awkward silence. "It's always the quiet ones," Ianto observed finally.


	4. Four On The Floor

Andy wasn't that bad as a trainee agent. Okay, the mainframe seemed to have some sort of grudge against him and he couldn't aim a gun for beans, but he had a copper's head on his shoulders, after all, patient and thorough and, well, _dogged_ in his pursuit of the facts of a situation. Just look at how he'd approached his own problem, drilling deep through a pile of truly awful films and books in some hope of scenting out glimmers of real folk memories behind the folklore. (Even that one with Jason Bateman that _nobody_ ever admitted to sitting all the way through voluntarily.) If he was here as much to be subject as actor, well, easy enough to overlook that for the sake of having the help...

And so twenty-eight days went by, one after the other, crescent to dark to crescent until the afternoon when Gwen's mobile woke her from a kip with Creedence Clearwater Revival to remind her of the time. As if any of them really needed Ianto's tongue-in-cheek prompts of what day this was. Or what night.

They'd arranged one of the more conveniently-located cells for Andy's comfort, fitted out as best any of them could think of to contain a large, clever, and not entirely sane animal in style; _Second month I chewed up my iPod_, he'd explained sheepishly when Gwen had held up one of the more colourful rubber objects from a shopping expedition curiously. Well, she reckoned he'd know better what the wolf-mind would consider entertaining. And it _would_ probably be dreadfully tedious, to be a natural hunter penned up in a space only a few metres square for the whole of that night. Couldn't really begrudge him the squeaky lobster.

He stood in the doorway of that cell now, surveying his home for the next few hours as a mobile in Ianto's pocket tootled the same few bars of _Blue Moon_ over and over until Jack slipped a hand in to pat it into quiet. "Better than spending the night trying to stay out of the way of Animal Welfare. Not that I _should_ be thinking about ever having kids, now, but... you know."

From the politely frozen expressions on Jack and Ianto, _they_ were certainly following. "Yeah. So. You want us to hang around for this, or should we just let you get on with it and come get you in the morning?"

Andy turned back as the cell door closed behind him, blushing, as if he'd not really thought this bit through. "Well, erm, I mean, if you'd _want_ to watch, I wouldn't... Since it's for science."

"We can go over the tapes later if you'd rather," Ianto offered diplomatically, looking as if he were desperately hoping to hear a _sure, later_. "Unless you'd like the company."

"Dunno, I've never... _changed_ in front of anyone before. Dunno if it would be better or worse if someone were there with me. It might. I think."

"I'll stay," Gwen said, laying her hand against the plastic window.

Andy gave her a pathetically grateful smile. And blushed deeper: "Erm, I need to have my kit off for it."

"We'll leave you kids to it," Jack said with a smirk. Ianto was already halfway to the stairs, hard even to tell if he was running _from_ or _towards_ \--

"They're going up for a shag," Andy said, muffled as he pulled off his shirt.

"I was beginning to wonder if you'd noticed," Gwen teased, leaning against the doorway and trying not to watch as Andy unbuttoned his trousers.

"Hard to miss when you have the nose of a wolf." He looked a bit doleful about his own plans for the evening. "Jack's scent is, I dunno, I'm glad it's only a few days out of the month, he's very distracting to be around. Not sure if I want to jump him or sick up."

Gwen had to laugh; "I don't think he gets that _second_ one very often. Leave it to a werewolf to be allergic to the charms of the great Captain Harkness."

And Jack would probably have had a regret or two about what he was missing, she thought as Andy finished his striptease and settled down to wait for the moonrise. Life as a part-time wolf seemed to have its benefits, he'd been fit enough as a copper but those legs had been running down some real rabbits lately. His arms, too. He had an impressive pelt on him as it was, dirty-blond curls as thick on his chest as his head. Gwen wondered what the first sign of the transformation beginning was; so far he was just standing there, covering himself with his hands and actually looking more bored than embarrassed, as if any moment now he was going to forget and check the watch he wasn't even wearing --

The films had it wrong. It wasn't sudden, it was _subtle_, deeper and deeper breaths until Andy was trembling in every muscle, heaving as if his lungs could never again bring in enough air to fuel the fire sparking within. But they'd been right about one thing. The pain. Being reshaped cell by cell _would_ hurt, enough to drive one down to hands and knees with a whimper on every exhale, each sharper than the one before as bones melted and warped beneath skin shrouding itself demurely in a blanket of coarsening down -- Gwen pressed her palms flat to the glass and watched, just watched, _witnessed_, for him, until gasping screams became full-throated howls, and, finally, lying exhausted upon the heavy rag-rug...

Not quite a wolf, as Gwen's recollection of nature programmes went; Andy might have passed for a very, _very_ large dog, to people who'd see only what they expected to see, some unholy mix of deerhound and alsatian and the slightest mad touch of golden retriever somewhere in it all. The eyes, though. The eyes were far too intelligent for an ordinary animal. And there was something wrong about the front feet, just a little too long and slender of digit to be entirely convincing as _paws_...

The werewolf rose shakily to all fours and a wet black nose snuffled into an airhole in the plastic, scenting for her. Gwen squatted down on her haunches to look into those strange eyes, startling grey of fine Welsh slate against the dirty-blond fur -- "No, erm, you'll have to stay in there, I'm afraid. Good... Good boy."

With a loud sigh Andy flopped down with his chin on his paws and started gnawing at a nylon bone, looking every bit as sulky as his human self. And the bottom teeth just that little bit crooked, the same as -- Gwen pressed a hand to her mouth and realised that she was weeping.


	5. Five For Fighting

The truly _horrible_ part of it all was how quickly it came to seem almost normal that time was now measured out by that one night every fourth week, how they could have become accustomed enough themselves to the cycles of the moon even to disable most of Ianto's rubbish alarms. The wolf pitched the occasional tantrum, managing to destroy nearly everything in his cell one month when Gwen had taken off ill for that evening, but on the whole Andy's condition wasn't any more trouble than the _average_ Torchwood employee could manage to be when one of them put their mind to it. Less bother than Owen had been, at times.

Although the bit where this one-sided conversation didn't seem to be taking place into an earpiece was... new, even for here. "So you're a twat _and_ a rubbish poltergeist, last time you made _her_ cry she locked me out of my email for a week... I'm not your bloody relationship counsellor --"

"Andy?" He looked up at Gwen as if she'd caught him out chewing on an old shoe. "You can't be losing it _already_, I was next in the queue for a breakdown. Ianto's got me down in his diary for next Thursday."

He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in mad spikes like the wolf's shaggy coat. "Oh, ah, erm... Did I mention that the Hub seems to be haunted?"

Gwen considered this. "Actually I'd be more surprised if it weren't, I think. Who by, are you seeing anyone in particular?"

He looked really uncomfortable now, as if he'd rather have been dismissed outright. "Lots of people. Most of them just ignore me, but this one keeps wanting his desk back."

"..._Owen?_"

It couldn't, they'd never even _met_, but Andy was looking straight at the spot where the medic's face would have been if he'd been leaning in to harass whoever had usurped his chair, like she'd seen him do to Jack or Ianto or herself a thousand times before... _Mam always did say that dogs could see ghosts_. "Right, mate, you are a _tosser_," the constable said to the stretch of empty air with a sour face. "No, but _I_ can, and that's just bloody -- Oi!"

"I don't want to know, do I."

Andy shook his head, plain from his look that he was certainly experiencing something that had her late colleague down well enough to do a convincing impression, if nothing else. "No, it's because, unlike you, I have _some_ consideration for her feelings," he addressed the phantasm sternly, and then glanced back at the monitor he'd apparently been trying to get some work done on, which had just broken up into blittering static; "Shit, and there's _her_ messing this about again, I'll have to sort it from home later."

Well, and it only made sense that _Tosh_ would be haunting the mainframe. Or... whatever. "My boss-sense is tingling with the sound of people not working and not getting frisky with each other either, guys," Jack said from the doorway of his office.

"Oh, it's nothing, really, Andy's just been sat here talking to Owen's _ghost_ for the last half hour."

Ianto had worked at Torchwood far too long, Gwen sometimes thought. He'd barely even looked up from his clipboard. "Is this a talent we could use out in the field, or just something rubbish like _detect annoying bastards, three-metre radius_?"

There was a pause as Andy appeared to be _listening_. "He says he used to watch you and Jack shagging but he got bored of it because you're both crap anyway."

"Detect bastards, then. Well, it was worth a thought --"

Jack's expression was that of the rational man who'd just been hit with the dawning realisation that his entire staff was Welsh enough to really clap for Tinkerbell. "Not to interrupt fairy-story night, but why is he even still up here?"

"Moonrise isn't till quarter to nine --"

Ianto looked to his watch, shaking his head. "It's half eight now. Summer time started Sunday."

Leave it to Owen to get the rest of them killed being a distracting prat from beyond the grave. Andy pushed back from the workstation in a panic, chair spinning wildly and crashing down the steps of the old autopsy room. Bolting for the safety of the cells, stumbling to the concrete as shifting bones began to betray him --

"Don't you _dare_, Jack Harkness!" Gwen gasped, catching at Jack's arm as he sighted along the barrel of his Webley.

"He had me put it into his _contract_, Gwen. If he endangers anyone, including us --"

She couldn't doubt it, it was exactly the chillingly sensible thing that Andy would ask and Jack would see the logic in, but, this was _Andy_ \-- Gwen winced at a strangled gasp of _Don't let me hurt her!_ Ianto had obviously leapt ahead to the conclusion that this counted _him_ expendable, his own gun trained on the shuddering form. "Wait. _Please_."

"Get out of the way, Gwen."

"No. I can't, I can't _let you_..."

The wolf yipped and stood up in the pile of torn-off clothes, shaking a sock off his hind foot. Andy cocked his head at them, sniffing the air. A long pink tongue lolled from his mouth, considering Gwen --

And then he -- well, _bounced_ over to knock her down with enormous paws on her shoulders, slobbering in her face like any silly old dog happy to see his...

Okay, she'd been sitting with him, talking to him, giving him chips through the airholes, but... all right, he _did_ know them. Or at least he knew _her_. And from the way he was whuffling happily into her hair instead of, say, tearing her throat out, she was glad enough of it... But, oh, poor Andy.

Someone was sniggering. "It's not _funny_! Get him off!"

"I thought he was _actually_ gonna start humping your leg." Jack had relaxed all in a rush, returning the Webley to its holster. "I mean, you can see he wants to even when he's --" Andy growled at the outreaching hand and Jack pulled back hastily. "Whoa, big guy. Looks like he's imprinted on you pretty good."

"I could have told you that before he was a werewolf." Gwen sighed, shoving at the furry bulk pinning her to the floor. Andy didn't seem to lose any mass at all in the transformation, which would explain a few things but wasn't much fun to find out by having the subject suddenly plop onto your torso. "Oi, could you -- Yeah, that's it, be a good Andy and --"

With a suspiciously doggy _whuff_ the werewolf suffered himself to be parted from his prey. "So long as he hasn't already killed us all, maybe we should see how well he does out for a change," Ianto said speculatively as Gwen staggered to her feet. "Unless you want to be the one to try to get him downstairs _now_."

"No, I think that wolf's out of its pen for good." Gwen sat down heavily on the settee, trying to catch her breath. Andy hopped up and sprawled into her lap, fourteen stone of smelly fur wriggling to expose his belly for a good scratching. She grimaced and complied, trying not to think too hard about the fact that he still only had two nipples.

And that was how Gwen woke a few hours later, stiff-necked where her head had been drooping without support, although now it was fourteen stone of naked copper stretched out across her lap, snoring away blissfully. _Emphatically_ naked copper, at that. Gwen felt her cheeks flaming. (Although that was... erm. A grower, then.) "Morning," Ianto remarked, venturing out from the safety of Jack's office with a slyly lifted eyebrow for the scene on the settee. "Good one, too, looks like."

Gwen made a rude gesture and Ianto beat a diplomatic retreat in the direction of coffee. Andy's snores had hitched as she shifted herself; now he opened his eyes with a sleepy murmur, hesitated, and pointed an inquiring finger in the general direction of his crotch as if he were rather afraid to look. Gwen nodded mutely. The oh-so-human face screwed up into an embarrassed wince. "Bugger. Sorry. This is really not how I'd... Never mind. I didn't disembowel you," he added wonderingly.

"No, you were a _good_ dog." He snorted and sat up, dragging the blanket someone had draped round Gwen's shoulders in the night into his lap to cover himself. "Maybe... Maybe you have enough control over this now that you don't need to stay the whole night locked up once you've changed. So long as you're still somewhere you can feel safe?"

"Or with someone safe to look after me." Tentative grin growing brighter as she didn't say him no --

"You _really_ seemed to like Gwen," Jack contributed, strolling out of his office looking a hell of a lot fresher than Gwen felt. "I thought we might have to start worrying about finding homes for the puppies."

Comic and awful, to hear a lupine whine escaping human lips. "I think sometimes it's meant as a blessing not to be able to remember what I do when I'm the wolf. Don't necessarily need to be _reminded_ of it after."

"He's just being a bastard before coffee." Gwen glared over at Jack. He only grinned and tossed her Andy's change of clothes.


	6. Sixpence In Your Shoe

A traffic backup. A bloody traffic backup from a bloody overturned lorry, and if they weren't out of this in another few minutes -- "I suppose it wouldn't help anything if I apologized again," Jack said from the driver's seat.

"The rift waits for no man," Andy said, a little shakily. "Or wolf."

It had been madness to take him along on a mission on the day of the full moon, but he was right, there hadn't been the choice, they'd needed all four of them to settle the lost herd of alien goats out of the way in the secluded valley, and if not for this fucking lorry they _would_ have been back at the Hub safe by now and not sitting on the M4 wondering how much damage a transforming werewolf might do in this confined a space. To the SUV, to himself, to _them_: however much control he'd got over himself _as_ the wolf by now he was still a right mess getting there (although he'd managed to all but sleep through the entire change last month when he'd caught a cold just before the full moon, and hadn't _that_ been the most interesting crank-call an emergency veterinarian had ever got but at least they'd know not to give him Lemsip if it happened again), perfectly capable of lashing out with enough force to break screens, or skulls, if he was disturbed in those moments of unreasoning agony. Ironic, that having a properly weevil-proof boot which might have done for this meant that it wasn't _accessible_ from within the passenger compartment...

She could see to what was causing the blockage now: _two_ lorries, it turned out, one half off the road and one just parked at the -- Gwen's heart sank. Yes, there it was, the Harwood's logo on both vehicles, and of bloody _course_ her husband to the side of the scrum, giving his account to the emergency personnel. "Oh, that is _all_ we need --"

Andy let slip a small pained-sounding whine. "Was that the call to abandon ship?" Jack asked.

"Yeah. Sorry. Oh, god --"

As casually as they could the other three members of Torchwood stepped down from the SUV, trying to look as if they were getting out to help rather than fleeing the vehicle before someone turned into a werewolf in the back seat. Gwen spared one extra moment to be sure that the doors had got properly locked and decided that she might as well go all the way with the pretence of usefulness, striding over to meet her husband just as he spotted her and waved. "You weren't _in_ that?" she asked, gesturing at the disabled lorry.

"No, this one following behind, yeah? He's not badly hurt, they don't think, I might be sore a while from how fast I had to stop, it was all this bloody rain you see, you give them the training and it's still never..."

Through the soothing stream of Rhys's chatter, the unmistakable sound of an automatic window rolling itself down.

Gwen turned to see fourteen stone of blond werewolf pouring out of the rear window of the SUV and landing less than gracefully on the tarmac. Andy shook himself from nose to tail and started looking about at the slowly creeping traffic as if he were sizing up this strange herd for some sick or weak member he could pick off. "Rhys, get up into the cab. _Now!_"

Rhys looked less than alarmed by the supposed menace. "S'pose you're going to tell me that's an _alien_ dog, yeah? Bloody werewolf maybe, he's big enough! What is he, some sort of a Dane cross?"

"Just listen to me and do it, Rhys, slowly, he's _dangerous_ \--"

As if to refute this slander, Andy spotted Gwen and came bumbling over for some attention, butting the top of his head into her hip almost hard enough to knock her over. "Looks like he likes you well enough," Rhys said.

The intelligence tests they'd devised suggested that Andy was _in there_, somewhere, although in such an altered state of consciousness it was hard to tell how he was really experiencing anything; yes, he'd been managing well enough at the Hub, when it was just them, but outside, where he could run off... Gwen took hold of a handful of thick shag at the back of the wolf's neck, trying to keep a calm face for Rhys. "He's unpredictable, is all, won't usually let anyone but me near him. We don't like to have him in the car at all but we had to take him out for a --" Andy pulled free and sauntered over to lift his leg against the front tyre of Rhys's lorry. "Andy! Oh, you _wanker_ \--"

"Alien or no he's a dog, right enough," Rhys said, blissfully immune to the nuances of the insult. "Calling him after Andy, eh? Good choice, looks just like him. Ha, he even looks as if he's about to read me a caution. How about it, boy, you a police dog?"

"Woof," Andy said. Looking as if he was just _waiting_ for something he could claim as provocation, like a pat on the head or a thrown stick.

Rhys, bless him, was at heart a practical man, alien-hunting wife or not. "Needs to be on a lead before someone calls him in to the police there's a bear on the loose, aye?" Gwen had a sudden crazed vision of herself being dragged across a park as those powerful legs gave chase to a squirrel. "Probably want to think what you're going to do if you keep him, don't want him running about making more alien doggies with all the local ladies. If you'd even find a bitch who'd go near him --"

"The traffic's moving," Gwen said in desperate relief as a car hooted at them to get away from the edge of the road. _Please tell me you're not going to remember this conversation when you change back_. "We need to get ours out of the way, see you at home, love?"

"Right, yeah, might be late with this paperwork, I'll bring us a take-away -- Oh, you said this was your night on, catch you in the morning then? Save me having to buy an extra for him, probably eats more than we do!"

Andy barked again, as short and brusque as any expressively human snort. Gwen didn't need to speak wolf to suspect that he'd meant it rudely. Rhys was still oblivious, waving happily as she led her werewolf back to the SUV and opened the rear door for him to hop up onto the seat. "Never could take you anywhere," she told the furry face, giving the flopping ears a scratch.

And oh, that toothy mouth could _grin_.


	7. Seven For A Secret

She'd almost got used by now to waking from a doze with Andy's naked bulk sprawled across her, reassurance to them both that skin was back to skin and limbs in the proportion that one should expect. It was the part where Gwen's own hide was bare against his that sent her starting up in panic. _Oh. Oh, no. ...Yeah. Yeah, you did. Oh, _god.

Start with the obvious, _you're at his and it looks as if you were both well and pissed?_ Andy had been melancholy lately, since they'd worked out that there simply wasn't anything obvious to be _done_ about his situation, no virus or mutagen or nanotechnological cause to this that any of Torchwood's powers to research it could uncover. Which wasn't any more than he'd been expecting all along, as he'd said from the beginning, but Gwen had been holding out for _some_ slim hope...

None of which exactly explained how they seemed to have ended up shagging on the floor in front of his telly. _Come on, Gwen, piece it back together_ \--

_Keeping him company on a bad night with videos and a pizza and not-completely-awful wine, a bit past pleasantly mellow and on to somewhere it seemed to make sense that Andy had nuzzled into her hair to murmur, "You smell really... nice, tonight."_

_"Get out."_

_"No, it's, I dunno, it's just... nice." Whuffling at her like the wolf now, playful yet a little... Well, he smelt nice himself, for that matter, the building change within him spiky with pheromones to rival Jack's own private blend, almost enough to make a girl think of_ \--

Yeah. Think of _that_. The probability that they'd remembered to think of much _else_ sinking further with every returning flash of the view from her hands and knees in front of the settee, ecstatic howls from two human throats --

Andy murmured as Gwen extracted herself from his outflung arm and opened sleepy eyes to gaze up at her in muzzy post-wolf confusion. No, post-_coital_ confusion, the full moon proper wasn't until the next night. (Was he even contagious except at the very brink of the change? And what the _hell_ had they been thinking --) "Gwen? You're still, you're, tits, erm..."

"Yeah. We did."

She could see the bricks dropping one by one behind his eyes, until the last one finally hit some important lever and he started grabbing at his own scattered garments. "Shit, shit, Rhys is going to have me neutered --"

"_You?_ I'm only turning him into the advert for _everyone your partner's partner's shagged_."

Andy gave her a _look, _frantically trying to dress with hands shaking so badly they might as well have been paws. "I usually _do_ have more sense than this. And not even as if I've been about much... since... but, but, yeah. The other. God."

Her own fingers weren't working so well to sort buttons either. "So what do we do? Call Martha to start some blood-tests or just wait about to see if I turn into a _werewolf_ in a few hours?"

"I don't think it would be, not so _soon_, I know it wasn't until the next full moon that I -- Don't think we _can_ do anything but watch you. And... Erm. Rhys."

The schedule she kept it wasn't as if she'd seen much of her husband in the last few weeks as it was, not too much of a stretch to find ways to put him off until she could be sure that she was... Safe. Or not. Sleeping with someone from work in a moment of insanity, well, that almost made _sense_, that would be a joy to explain again compared to _and, erm, may have dragged home this STI, sweetheart_... Rhys would be the one to have puppies over _that_. He'd make that _bloody Torchwood_ face, and he'd rant, and then he'd ask her to bite _him_ so she didn't have to do this alone. Because he was Rhys, and his heart was so much bigger than his brain. She'd put silver bullets into her own gun before she'd let it come to that, she would.

Andy had most of his clothes back on by now, although in a minute or two he was going to notice he'd got the shirt inside-out. "I can think of one thing could _possibly_ have been worse than this but I can't look the neighbours' dog in the face as it is --"

"You _didn't_."

"What? No, 's a, a toy, I'd _crush_ \-- Never mind! Not sexually attracted to _poodles_, for christ's sake!"

"Jack knows this bloke," Gwen said, and then decided it was probably better not to finish that sentence.

"I like women. _Human_ women. Okay, and the occasional human bloke, I'm not going to, I thought _he_ was human, you're hardly going to think of asking a thing like that before you shag somebody! I mean, look at _me_, would you..."

He trailed off, maybe not wanting to hear Gwen's answer now that she was sober. "You're human, Andy. You're more human than a lot of people I know. Than a few I've shagged, come to think of it." (She _was not_ thinking of Owen. Not even if she'd spent most of yesterday having to listen to Andy's half of a screaming argument about whether Tosh could have learnt something useful from all the downloaded porn that was still knocking around the mainframe --) "It'll be all right. I mean, _whatever_ happens... It will be all right."

He knew her too well to look all that convinced by her wan grin, but he let her draw him into a hug before she went to skulk out, and even pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead as he let her go. He _still_ smelt good enough to shag, at that. She could see anyone hopping into bed with a werewolf and not even too many pints in them, with that provocation. Put into perspective all those jokes about gnawing your own leg off to get away in the morning, this did...


	8. Eight, I Forget What Eight Was For

Twenty-eight days. Twenty-eight days of waiting, and worrying, and now it came down to Andy slumped glumly in front of a workstation and already looking hard-done-by for barely the _start_ of this long shift. "Oi, Wolfboy, who took your bone away?" Gwen said from the bottom of the stairs, trying to make her voice light for the benefit of any unseen onlookers who might _not_ be too busy shagging to hear yet.

He nodded towards Jack's office. "I tell them and tell them, I can smell everything they're about in there, but do you think they could show a _little_ courtesy towards an employee with the occasional special requirements?"

"I'll add your name to the harassment suit, it's getting on for three hundred pages by now." She came up to ruffle his hair, small gesture that they'd found seemed to reassure the wolf in him at any time of the month. "Reckon we're about to find out just how stupid we were, then."

"Yeah, I... Yeah." Andy was regarding her quizzically, seeming a little distracted of a sudden. "Is that new perfume?"

"No, same old same old."

"Shampoo, then."

Gwen shook her head. "You're just trying to wind me up with it now, this is going to be a long enough night."

He mustered a wan smile. "Dunno what a lady wolf _would _smell like, anyway. Nearly moonrise, I should --"

But there would be _two_ cells with water-dishes laid on this month. Ianto's silent expression of sympathy had been almost too much to bear, when she'd shown him a trumped-up scratch and asked him not to mention it to Jack unless... circumstances... required him to. "_We_ should."

And would being a werewolf necessarily be so bad, Andy was otherwise doing well enough with it these days except for the part where he'd needed to be wormed, oh, and the general stress of turning into a _wolf_ every month which couldn't exactly be good for anyone, there was always that. Gwen hesitated, staring at the pile of her clothes on the concrete bench, and finally laid her wedding ring on top. _How does he stand this, every month?_

Lord, but the vaults were chilly. She'd have to mention it to Jack sometime, see if she couldn't work it in as a human-rights issue for the weevils or something. She paced aimlessly for a few minutes, and ended sitting pressed back into the corner, hugging her knees to her chest. Was this how it had been for him, that first time? No, it couldn't, Andy hadn't any warning at all that he was about to see his life change so drastically. He'd only worked out something strange was wrong with him when a neighbour complained about the barking. She should have asked Ianto to leave a blanket as well. Or would that have been a mistake, a lot of Andy's stories of what he'd managed to do to his flat those first few times had involved horrible consequences to the duvet...

Too much time had gone by with only an anxious cramp in her stomach to show for her trouble, the mournful whining from the next cell proof enough that there didn't seem to be any baying at the full moon in her immediate future. Although _relief_ seemed... well. Couldn't help it, could you, but. Gwen dressed herself with trembling, _human_ fingers and went to heel Andy to her, patting the shaggy head a little sadly. "No proper company for you, then. Come on, let's go upstairs and toss the ball around, yeah?"

He seemed unusually morose tonight, for the wolf, ignoring her efforts to distract him with his favourite toys in favour of laying himself down on the settee with his chin on his paws like some grumpy old hound who'd been left behind when the young pups went off to the hunt. Gwen shrugged and settled in for an evening with Torchwood's eternal paperwork. Pity it was pissing down rain tonight, a run around the Plass might have done him good. (Absurd to have to think of her colleague in terms of a dog who'd been indoors all day, but then that was what everyone at Torchwood was, weren't they --) Almost like not even having a werewolf in the house at all, he was so quiet...

Andy was back to himself when Gwen looked up from her running battle near dawn, asleep with his bare bum stuck up in the air like a baby who'd conked out mid-crawl. Yoga for werewolves. She went to drape a blanket over him in the underground chill: "You'll be stiff, sweetheart."

He yawned as wide as the wolf and sat up, letting the blanket slip carelessly from his shoulders. Not really much point in clinging to modesty when someone had seen you running about in your furry altogether as much as she had by now and that not even as the _wolf_, yeah. "You're all right, then?"

Gwen wriggled her fingers at him. "Clean bill of species health, apparently. Let me drop you home so I can go make it up to Rhys before he has to get to work."

Andy was regarding her with the most peculiar expression. "But you still smell of... I don't know, I..." He caught up her hand and gave it a good long sniff, brows drawn together as if they _were_ the stereotypical mark of the wolf. When he released it he'd gone pale. "Gwen, what would _normal_ people have been worrying about with all of this?"

Twenty-eight days, twenty-eight days gone by and what was the more _usual_ sense of_ time of the month_... "_Shit_."


	9. Nine Months

"I'm pregnant and it's not yours and I'm _sorry_, Rhys, this is completely not anything I would have wanted to, I _needed_ to talk to you before I, I, won't you _say something_ \--"

He'd gone the colour of soft cheese, staring as if Gwen had finally grown another head. "Is this where you've been all those nights? In some other man's bed?"

"God, Rhys, it's _Andy_, we --"

"It's _Andy's_ baby? That -- that _lump_? Is that why Torchwood hired him away from the police? Because you missed having him around? How long has this been going on, Gwen?"

"It's not like that, Rhys, he, we, it was an --"

"I don't care if it was a bloody accident, Gwen, don't you even try to say that. No, stop, I don't want to hear it --"

"I've been gone nights because Andy's a_ werewolf!_" Well, shit, now the neighbours knew it too. Rhys had stopped in mid-rant, mouth agape. "You were right, that day with the lorry, that wasn't just any dog, you said yourself how much he -- That's where I've _been_, every full moon for the last year and a half. I've been helping to keep him from killing someone. Or himself. And I can prove _that_, I'll show you the video of him changing, but, but the other, I... We were pissed."

"You'd have to be." Rhys sat down hard on the settee. "Bloody hell. A real werewolf? _Our_ Andy? Hold on, he hasn't tried to bite _you_, has he?"

Gwen shook her head, wiping her cheek with fingers that came away stained black with mascara. "You know Andy, he's just a big puppy around me as it is. The wolf even likes to be scratched behind the ears," she added, picturing the goofy lupine grin that almost mapped to his human face.

Rhys drew in a gulping breath. "Get him a job as a bloody guide-dog, why don't we. You've been having an affair with a tosser who happens to turn into the Andrex puppy one night a month."

"It's not an _affair!_ It's just I've been the only one who's able to help him with what's happened to him, he doesn't _know_ any others, won't even let most people near him when he's -- We were tired and had too much to drink the one night, I didn't _say_ anything because I didn't want you sat here worrying whether I was going to turn into a _werewolf_ from it. But this is me, telling you, now."

"So you're saying you're sure you're _not_ infected or whatever you'd call it, anyway?" Rhys's colour was slowly returning. He sighed and shifted aside to make a space for her on the settee. "Aye, well, s'pose I said better or worse, didn't I. Even when it means worse is your bloody mad Torchwood rubbish coming home with you." And he managed to dredge up a faint smile: "What I get for saying we should practise on a puppy before we tried for kids, is it?"

"Shut it, you." Gwen nestled into his arms, feeling the steadying heartbeat beneath her cheek. "I don't know, I don't even know if the baby would be _human_, I shouldring Martha before it goes too long --"

"Stop talking rubbish." Rhys kissed the top of her head. "It's not the baby's fault how it's happened. And he's a good man even if he is a, a werewolf. At least he's not Sais, aye?"

Gwen let out a startled chuckle. "What, are you, are you saying you wouldn't _mind?_"

"Course I mind! But it's your baby, and, and that's an end of it. Take the rest of it as it comes, you know? This long trying to talk you into it being a good time to -- Just so the _next_ one's mine, yeah?"

Gwen sniffled. "I don't deserve you."

"No, you don't. But you've got me anyway."


	10. Ten Little Indians

"If you say 'Walkies!' one more time I'm going to tear your throat out. I will _find_ a bloody way, believe me --"

Life went on, even at Torchwood. Even when you were expecting anything but an ordinary little miracle. There had been some fascinating ultrasounds already, and just a good thing they had Martha for that, but it looked as if what Gwen couldn't get Jack to stop calling the corgi was doing perfectly well so far, gestating away with only that monthly twinge as the full moon rose and set. Thank god for the placental barrier, anyway.

It had been awkward, at first, all of them trying to work out what was perfectly appropriate impending-parenthood nerves versus all the other complications they had to choose from. Andy claimed to be just as happy to have his name left out of the matter as much as they could, murmuring about privacy and pitchfork-carrying mobs, and to Gwen's surprise it had been Rhys insisting staunchly that however the paternity went down on the paperwork _officially_ he wouldn't be one to stand in the way of a man knowing his kid. "And we'll just have to hope he's not a biter once he gets to nursery, aye?" (Yeah. There was that. Andy's son. He'd been all quiet trying not to step on Rhys's toes about it, but show her a bloke who didn't turn into a right idiot when you told them _that_, even if he hadn't already been convincing himself it was his responsibility not to pass on a curse if he could help it.)

So it was business as usual, with all of its weevils and werewolves and ghostly presences being an unseen bastard to the one member of their staff who didn't have the option of ignoring the strange and unusual. "I may have a little less control over my animal instincts than I'd like, but you're the one who _knew_ what he was doing to her. Oi, I could report you to the RSPCA, that's discriminatory against wolves --"

She'd seen Owen for herself, four weeks ago, stepping back into his role as Torchwood's medic after the wolf had darted out into traffic and collided with a hapless Mini; he'd inevitably managed to spoil the moment with a cutting remark about her cub, but the experience had left her surprisingly shaken about events she'd thought long since laid to rest. And rather glad that he seemed to exert most of his haunting efforts towards annoying easier targets. Even Jack had grudgingly admitted that under the proper circumstances it wasn't completely unthinkable that a personality as determined as Owen's might leave some sort of lingering imprint. "He's just jealous he was never flexible enough to lick his own... oookay, that went somewhere even _I_ didn't want to go, never mind."

Andy pushed back from the workstation with a long-suffering grimace. "Right, I'm going to go turn into a werewolf now so I don't have to listen to either of you any longer, I think. Where did we leave the bloody lead...?"

Gwen had come to enjoy their monthly constitutionals, this licence to explore the darkened city as she pleased; after all, it wasn't as if anyone in their right _mind_ was going to try to mug her. Or not in their right minds, at that, even the people who weren't muttering into mobiles gave Andy a wide berth. Perhaps _especially_ the madmen. Some of them must know a werewolf when they really saw one. And a werewolf who'd been a copper, girl couldn't ask better protection for walking out late at night than that.

But they always seemed to end the small hours of the morning at this little park not far from his flat, with a ball to throw about to enhance the illusion of a normal night out with a normal hound, and more often than not sharing the last kebab of the evening to keep her own wolf within growing fat and happy. Gwen perched at the edge of a bench, gazing fondly down upon the fuzzy face buried in the remains of her chips. He'd eat anything, pretty well literally _anything_, and some of it was just as well that he'd have no recall of it as a human, it was bad enough having to keep the veterinary record of how he'd been nosing around on a dead hedgehog without adding in the bits about old shoes and poo. Although the part where Andy had put his paws up on the counter of the van and _chuffed_ forlornly until the owner had laughed and given him a bit of extra meat for his own was something she'd have loved to make him live down the next morning at work --

Andy's head snapped up, scenting around, low rumbling growl she'd never heard from him before spilling past those wicked teeth. Gwen followed his sightline and spotted a large black shadow near the far side of the park. _Please, let that be someone's lost Great Dane_...

But it wasn't _moving_ like a dog, any more than Andy did when one truly got to seeing him for what he was, far too much purpose in the way this dark-furred creature was sizing up the scene before it. _Someone changed _him_, after all. Of course there would be others_. Smaller than Gwen's werewolf, if that really meant anything, but then it only stood to reason, not many _humans_ were his size either --

Andy had dropped into a full-on _defence of the master_ crouch between her and the strange wolf, snarling deep in his throat. (_Weevil spray? Gun? Stun grenade?_ Not the moment to realise they never had properly tested out the theories about silver...) Now he threw his head back and let out a barrel-chested howl that raised the hairs on the back of Gwen's neck, primal terrors whispering _the better to eat you with_ to a place deep in her genes. The smaller wolf matched him, not quite up to Andy's timbre but setting off a few more car alarms on that side of the park for all that.

And then they were off, galloping across the grass, lunging for each other, any moment one of them was going to, those teeth, they were...

_Oh._

_Oh, my._

_Oh,_ god.

Well. _That_ was something you simply did not see every day, not even if you worked at Torchwood. Gwen was dimly aware that her jaw had dropped, goggling at the two werewolves who'd decided they had better ways to get on with each other in the middle of a Cardiff park than _fight_. (And, oh, the other one was a bloke as well, that was... Oh. _Oh_.) Was this some sort of dominance-struggle ritual that had been bowdlerised out of the legends or were they just happy to see --

Gwen shook herself. She shouldn't be watching this, really, Andy was her friend, and werewolf or not it seemed a bit rude to stare at your friends when they were trying to, erm, mount each other. Jack and Ianto's preferences notwithstanding. "I'll just be, erm, over here, then..."

(Were werewolves like dogs? They might be here for a while...)


	11. Eleven, Exactly, One Louder

Not the woods this time, or the safety of the old ward, but bless him if he did know where he was, soft sheets beneath him and not even ripped up to wolf-mauled flinders. Someone's flat, apparently. Someone who'd thought they were being kind to a stray dog, and he'd open his eyes to find them lying mutilated in the doorway --

Or not, maybe. Snoring, actually. Snoring beside him, just as bare-arsed, and on the _other_ side of the naked bloke a woman who still had her clothes on, thank whatever powers still looked after foolish drunks and werewolves, and it was about here that the _naked bloke_ part sank in far enough to startle him the rest of the way awake.

The naked bloke was another wolf.

This was about the stage of things where his instinct would be to find his trousers and slip out quietly, if he hadn't known quite well he hadn't any trousers to find. There was losing one's human inhibitions, and then there was the horrible suspicion that you'd spent half the night having gay werewolf sex in the middle of a city park, and it wasn't exactly helping matters that something about this seemed achingly familiar.

The woman wore a wedding-ring. _Threesome_ werewolf sex in the middle of a city park, like he'd rung up on some 'couple seeks SWWM, 21-30, for film night and public debauchery, let's disembowel some chickens together, no fatties' advert? But no, she wasn't one of -- them -- she smelt of it a bit but only in the same way that Mitchell complained of ever trying to borrow anything of his if they were late getting the washing sorted, and anyway the _clothed_ detail suggested a human bystander who just happened to have some sort of fetish for fur and fangs.

Oh, god, this was looking kinkier by the minute.

The others had been disturbed by his movement, the naked bloke turning to look over a pale shoulder marked by three faint scars spaced about right to have been made by human fingers. Or claws. Tiny flare of the nostrils to say that he'd picked up on the same cues of identity; "Ah, good morning, then?"

Welsh accent. He'd never woken up all the way across the Severn before. Vague recollections suggested that someone's actual _legitimate_ stag-do would have been involved in some capacity. Gay, _drunken_ werewolf sex, then, and he was probably in bloody Newport. Without any trousers. "Erm, sorry, I'll need to ring for a lift... Where, exactly, _am_ I?"

The other werewolf reached for a mobile lying on the bedside table next to a heavy-duty collar with a tag on that said _Andy_. "Croeso i Gymru. You can tell them to meet you in front of the Millennium Centre in Cardiff."

Gay, drunken werewolf sex in a public park in Cardiff. It wasn't his worst morning, but it was up there. "Your accent's still shite," the woman said sleepily. Her voice stirred a memory of a sensation like rubbing his hair dry with a fluffy towel, only all over his body. _Kinkier by the minute_.

The line connected at the first ring, and he gave an abbreviated and no doubt quite garbled account of the circumstances in which he found himself, cringing at the yipping hysteria he heard creeping into his voice. (He suspected he made a rubbish werewolf, as it went, far from the confident natural alpha one would fantasise oneself to be if one were mad enough to think any of this a good hobby to take up. Even this Andy bloke seemed to have this sorted better, and he didn't look one to eat first in the _human_ scale of social interactions.) Mitchell sounded amused but touchingly relieved as he agreed to mount the rescue.

The other werewolf had got up to rummage in the wardrobe by the time he'd rung off, feeling somewhat better about his prospects for the morning but just as naked. "Yeah, cheers, erm... not even entirely sure how I got here last night, really."

Andy grinned and held out a Cardiff Blues hoodie. "Woke up in a lorry once, that could have got _pardonnez-moi, où sont mes pantalons_ if he'd tied down his sides better."

He started to stand up to put on the track-pants that followed the hoodie out of the wardrobe and the woman gave them a _oh, make that _two_ naked blokes then_ look, turning away to hide a gap-toothed smile behind her hand. "I'll go make us some tea, then," she said, and slipped out practically at a run.

Gay werewolf sex, then. Brilliant. "I smell of dog shampoo."

A resigned grimace as Andy sniffed his own underarm. "That'll be Gwen worrying about dragging in the fleas again. Only bloody job I can think of where the medical includes jabs for parvovirus."

"Is she, your..."

"No, we, erm -- work together. The wolf trusts her enough she takes me out for a run, keeps it from getting a bit much always shut up with it. Tells people I'm not a stray and sees me home at moonset, all that."

"She's sort of your... werewolf beard, then? People believe you're just her _dog?_"

Andy shrugged. "People see what they think they're going to see. Should be some photos from last night on the mobile, have a look."

He'd never thought to keep a record of his condition. Hadn't wanted to have to consider the proof, he supposed. Gwen had taken one of both werewolves curled up on the bed; side by side like puppies in a basket they _might_ just have been two large scruffy dogs, one dark and one fawn like the other man's hair. "You have floppy ears," he said.

"Workmate has this theory about how a werewolf would stay a bit like a puppy. I had to go look up 'neoteny' and I'm still not sure he wasn't just trying not to tell me my _human_ ears are too big."

"You're, _completely_... out at work?"

Small disbelieving snort. "I am not a patch on _their _issues, believe me. Don't know I'd try it if I was still with the Heddlu, though, mates there would just as soon leave you somewhere to make it home with no trousers..." Andy was looking at him now with an arched eyebrow, lips parting as if he were grasping after some elusive thought -- "Gnomes."

That wouldn't have been the word he would have guessed. "Pardon?"

"Gnomes. On the wallpaper. _That's_ where I know you -- Erm."

He was probably flushing as crimson. "Oh. Oh, my _god_. That's my -- Did we, I --" _Boyish smile, 'would they notice if we', clutching until his nails_ \-- "Oh, my god, _I_ did this to you. I'm sorry, I'm so --"

"No, it's all right. Really. It is."

"I turned you into a _monster_, how is that in any possible sense of the words 'all right'?"

A blink that bordered on outright incomprehension. "Well, you know, you get on with it, yeah? Could have been cancer or something."

Well, that was that bloody Celtic fatalism for you, practically almost _expecting_ something like this to happen sooner or later. "You sound like Mitchell."

The look of sly interest seemed just a bit too casual. "Who's he, then? Your...?"

"My housemate, erm, he's a vampire, actually."

Cardiff was apparently rougher than he'd thought, from Andy's total lack of anything resembling a shocked reaction. "Used to share with this bloke in a band. Bet yours keeps better hours."

"Erm, I just said my housemate's a vampire, you did hear that part?"

"You should only see the job. Got bloody _aliens_ in our cellar. And ghosts playing at Moaning Myrtle down our internet lines, last time they had a domestic she launched a denial-of-service attack against the European Space Agency and nearly brought down a satellite."

"We live with a ghost as well. Ours... makes tea. It can be a surprisingly hostile act."

A wry, shy grin. "...You doing anything next month?"


	12. Twelve Lords A Leaping

She hadn't seen much of him since right after the birth, diplomatically making himself scarce to let the little family have its best chance of working out how they would be getting on with it all amongst themselves. (Rhys was the natural dad she'd always known he would be, maybe even enough so that someday he'd be able to explain to his child how it had come about that the forms had mysteriously got filled in with the middle name _Remus_...) The word from Ianto had been that Andy seemed to be managing the wolf well enough in her absence, pursuing some cryptic agenda of his own that usually saw him dragging in late the mornings after looking tired but contented. Gwen had her suspicions.

Here at the dark of the moon Andy could have passed for any other employee of any other firm in Cardiff, and no one had to know that the photos on Tosh's old workstation of a roly-poly infant and of a scruffy little pup with a ribbon round his neck weren't in the way of the usual idea of a boy and his dog. He wasn't exactly _working_ though, spun round with his feet up on the low table talking to the vacant settee. Another Thursday morning at Torchwood. "Bloody 'experiment', her knickers were on my _chair_ \--"

He'd begun working on a beard since the last time he'd come to visit little Euan, or maybe more just gone feral the way ordinary men tended to without women about and got bored of shaving. Amusing to see that the werewolf couldn't exactly seem to manage it. And shocking that it revealed he was going grey around the muzzle already, stresses on the body that were literally un-natural showing their inescapable traces. What was a werewolf's lifespan, if it wasn't caught and burnt at the stake? "Is Jack about?" Gwen asked as Andy looked up at her curiously.

He nodded over his shoulder. "Shagging Ianto down the archives."

"Not been missing much then." Gwen hesitated. "I just came in to... We've decided, I'm not coming back to Torchwood. Not as a field agent, anyway. Wanted to talk over my... _options_, assuming I have any."

She'd been wrong, Andy's face _could_ fall farther than it already had. "That'll be inconvenient, Jack was hoping you'd be back on in time to help train _my_ replacements."

"Oh, Andy, you're _not_."

"Erm, yeah, I'm... I shouldn't have stayed in the city as long as I have, it's not fair to keep asking you to be my _minders_. Ianto's helped me to find a place with a bit of land around it, should be out of the way enough I won't have to worry so much about cars, or what the neighbours' dogs think of me. Gave notice last week."

Gwen did suppose that Torchwood's leaving package would be particularly generous for an agent who also counted as a specimen best kept bought off to stay out of trouble. "So, what, from Torchwood to... gentleman farmer?"

"Gentleman werewolf," he corrected with a raised finger. "Haven't decided whether keeping the sheep on would be practical or just cruel."

"Sounds a bit lonely."

Andy shrugged. "Village just down the lane a way."

He'd have everyone in town looking out for him against the dogcatchers within the year, Gwen didn't doubt. Andy had always been one to find himself a pack. "And you'll have plenty of space to have mates over to run about barking at the moon with. Or whatever it is you've been about lately," she added with a sly eyebrow.

Andy went a little pink. "We just get together to knock over bins, it's... It's complicated. As if your personal life makes any _more_ sense," he added to the settee after a moment's pause. "You're only lucky Jack couldn't see any of that, none of us would ever be hearing the end of it."

Gwen had a sudden horrible thought. "Tell me Owen's not naked."

From Andy's put-upon look his decision to leave Torchwood had been more influenced by his situation than she might originally have guessed at. "Not _now_."

"...I'm going to go find Jack and Ianto now, it can hardly be worse. Don't you go biting all the pretty girls, you. Or the boys."

Andy managed a smile at this. "My best to Rhys and the cub. And remember I'll have space enough for _him_ to run about once he's up on all fours --" He turned in his chair to look at the nearest monitors; "Oi, that was terrible! You and Owen deserve each other."

She was probably going to regret asking this as well, but Gwen couldn't help herself: "What... what did Tosh say?"

Now he was blushing in earnest. "'Cold nose, warm heart'."

Well, and wasn't that her Andy. He'd been too good for this place, really. Anyone could shout at the monsters. But what sort of quiet courage did it take to make peace with _becoming_ one? "I'll come to see you. Every month. I'll come."


	13. Wolf Moon

Not the greatest surprise, Gwen supposed, to stumble upon a certain someone on their stroll round the waterfront, long legs stretched out lazily where he was catching some rare Cardiff sun on the steps of the Senedd. "Jack."

"I knew you wouldn't be able to stay away from the jawline forever." He sat up straighter to look into the pushchair. "Is it just me, or is he twice the size he was last time I saw him?"

"Babies do that."

Euan flailed under the scrutiny and tossed aside his teether. Jack picked up the puppy-sized nylon bone with a lift of one eyebrow, but handed it back to Gwen without comment. Rhys cleared his throat; "I'll take him round the basin, let you two catch up."

Jack shaded his brow with one hand to watch the Tad with his buggy trundle off down the quay. "Always said he was a keeper."

"He is that, yeah."

Jack's smile dimmed a bit, although it would have taken someone who knew him as well as she did to notice. "So, how have things been with you?"

"Oh, the usual, everyone at his work's mental and once a month my son turns into a puppy in his cot. But we're coping."

"Andy still doing all right with it?"

As if Jack didn't have his sources, of course, but Gwen humoured him, handing over her mobile to show him the photos of the well-kept house, and Euan taking his first steps in the garden, and one very large dog romping with a smaller ball of fluff by the light of the full moon. Andy had even adopted a few ordinary mutts to go along with the image of a country estate; his neighbours in the nearby village so far hadn't seemed to notice that their eccentric new part-time constable occasionally had an extra or two running about on his land of an evening...

Soon enough Jack's end of the conversation drifted onto work. Andy had managed to find him_ three_ candidates worth extending contracts to, bringing them back up to something more closely resembling a practical team after so long limping along without two of their limbs. If that wasn't too gruesome a metaphor even for Torchwood. Gwen listened with half her attention to his waxing rhapsodic over the one who not only preferred night shifts but didn't mind having to hear the rambling stories of bygone wars. And some rubbish about how they'd tried to call each other's bluff over the weapons training with claims of prior experience at the battle of Ypres and ended up -- well, she did have to cut Jack off before he could get _too_ far into a loving description of what she was terribly afraid had turned into a threesome right there on the range. Still Torchwood, whoever was actually on the duty-rota.

And still Torchwood enough that it was impossible to go for very long without an interruption, as Ianto came loping into view at a not-quite-emergency-_yet_ pace, abstracted nod for Gwen although his attention was clearly on his comm: "Dunno how convincing I'd be, no one's really afraid of Methodists. Except maybe DJs --"

"Duty never turns a blind eye for ten minutes around here." Jack pulled Gwen in for a peck on the cheek. "Don't be a stranger, huh? I don't want the next time I see the kid to be when he's hitting his Uncle Jack up for a job."

"I think we can manage to drop round a bit sooner than that." Ianto was shifting impatiently, well for Ianto at any rate, and Gwen thought she caught a mutter of _bloody Bristol_. "Go on, have fun saving the world."

Jack snapped her a salute and turned in a swirl of greatcoat to allow himself to be herded off down the Plass. Smiling to herself at the thought of how much Ianto could be like a loyal corgi himself, Gwen brushed off the seat of her trousers and went to catch Rhys up.


End file.
